As the defendant, I have seemingly lost a multi track civil

Hello my name is Alex and I will help you with this. Please note that I am a working Solicitor and may be on and offline as I have to attend Court and meet with clients, even at weekends. As such you may not get an instant response when you reply, but rest assured I will be giving your question my immediate attention upon return. For now please let me know are you joint tenants or tenents in common?

There are two differences:

Joint Tenancy: Owning your property as beneficial joint tenants means the property belongs to you and the other owner or owners jointly. You must all act together as a single owner, for example on a remortgage or a sale. You do not own specific shares in the property and you cannot give away a share of the property in a will. If you die, your interest in the property passes automatically to the other owner or owners.

Tenants in Common: Owning property as tenants in common means the property belongs to you jointly but you also own a specific share of its value.

Unless the tenancy was split and noted at the land registry then the default position is normally joint tenancy, that means you are one owner together and I will proceed to answer your question on that basis.

The Claimant can therefore have access to the whole equity of the property because you are considered to be one single owner. The equity is not split as would be for tenants in common. This means that the award of the claim against you can be taken from the equity without any regard to your wifes share.

I know this is not the answer you want and certainly not the one I want to give, if it had been the case that you were tenants in common then your wife would have a value of 50% of the property (and equity) and that would be protected. But in order to do that you needed to have split the tenancy and normally notified the land registry.

If this has not been done then as above you are considered a single owner which means her share can in effect be charged with any costs of the award against you.

If this fully resolves your question then please take a moment before you leave and rate my service, it only takes a second and is an important part of the process. Otherwise if you need more information or help then please click reply. Alex

I do not know, for that you need to contact customer services. I am a lawyer and can only see it from this side.

But does this answer your question regarding the civil case?